A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

We must suffer to the end, to the moment when we stop believing in suffering.

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

We inhabit a language rather than a country.

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.